The great outdoors

I had a very outdoorsy day yesterday, and it was a good job too as the indoor start to the day really did NOT go well. My friend Weeny and I had arranged to go on a guided botanical walk in my local area (some hour’s drive away from her), and she was picking me up at about nine thirty – or that was the plan. I got a call from my friend at eight thirty, and that’s when things started to go pear shaped; Heck, I thought, something’s gone wrong and she’s not coming.

Weeny: Hello?

Penguin: Hello?

Weeny: Well… are you OK?

Penguin: Fine thanks.

Weeny: Well … I’m waiting to leave!!

Penguin: Erm … jolly good.

Weeny: HRUMPH!!

Penguin: Oh … was I supposed to ring you and say I was OK?

Weeny: Well I thought you were!

Oops – I thought we’d agreed I’d ring her if I wasn’t well and she thought I was going to ring either way. Bad start as at this point she was already running slightly late, having waited for me to ring.

So before she arrived, and feeling fine, I thought I’d make myself useful for a change and put some washing in the machine. A bit later on I went to make a coffee, slipped on a small puddle of unexpected water on the kitchen floor and fell over enormous cat, who was less than impressed! Having established that I was still in one piece and so was he, I thought I’d better see where the water had come from. You guessed it – the washing machine. The door seal appeared to be leaking. I pressed the door and it stopped – let go and it dribbled again – pressed the door and it stopped, let go and it dribbled again. O-K, so I stand here all morning leaning on the washing machine, or I bung a few towels under the door and forget about it and leave it for poor hardworking hubby to sort out when he gets home. Well, since at this point my friend is due to arrive any minute I decide on the towel option.

Once that was sorted, and enormous cat apologised to, I thought I’d better get some suntan cream on, as although the weather didn’t look all that promising, I didn’t want to risk it. The suntan lotion leaked too.

OK, I’ll be honest, it didn’t actually leak but somehow I managed to squirt it all over me and all over my t-shirt. Expecting the doorbell to ring any second I frantically scrubbed at the t-shirt, realised it was hopeless, changed rapidly, reminded myself I was supposed to be having a fun day off and managed to calm down and de-stress, only to realise that Weeny was now fifteen minutes late! Round about this point the doorbell did finally ring and there she was, standing there going, ‘Come on penguin, mush-mush, we’re late!’

Needless to say we got stuck behind every slow-moving vehicle in Norfolk and neither of us had thought to bring the mobile number of the chap whose walk we’re going on, but dead on ten o’clock (which was when we were due to meet him) we rolled into the car park … and we were the only car in it! Right – so is it the wrong day, wrong place, what’s going on? Weeny was just about to phone her hubby to get the mobile number for the walkies chap when I had a flash of inspiration.

‘Weeny … you know his instructions said “go over the level crossing and it’s the car park on the left”? Well … what if we went over the level crossing the other way? Then it would be the car park over the other side of the crossing from this one …”

“Oh yes,” says Weeny, “there was a car over there…”

Sure enough, we turned around and went back over the crossing and there was a much larger car park with one solitary car in it and one solitary man scrabbling about on the ground with a huge camera trying to photograph a small plant. That’s got to be our man, we thought, and sure enough it was.

After that the day went much better! We spent a fascinating three hours learning about and looking at a variety of plants with fantastic names like Smith’s Pepperwort, Tower Mustard, Stork’s Bill, Shepherd’s Cress and Mouse-ear Hawkweed … and we had Mr Expert to ourselves, which was a bit of luck! (For us – not for him, from a financial point of view, but he never made us feel that we were wasting his day!) Best of all, my RA was totally quiescent – the idea of me spending three hours on my feet a few months ago would have been quite laughable (in a depressing sort of way, rather than a ‘funny ha-ha’ way!)

After a splendid morning we headed back to my place for lunch – both starving after all that fresh air and exercise. Of course we got stuck behind all the slowest moving vehicles in Norfolk AGAIN, and sat there hurling abuse at them and shouting ‘Oy – can’t you see we’ve got an emergency here. We want our LUNCH!’ A very nice lunch it was too, and then off for another stint of outdoorishness, this time butterfly-spotting on another local nature reserve. We didn’t have much luck with that – we were looking for three particular species which we know for sure have been in that area over the last few days. We didn’t see the faintest sign of two of them. The third, Green Hairstreak, we caught brief glimpses of flitting high up in the scrub – and I mean brief. Just enough to go ‘It’s definitely green!’ Still, even though we didn’t see what we were looking for, we had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine, and did see a few other interesting things.

Then I headed home to hubby, who said, rather woebegone, ‘I suppose that means you won’t want to come out for a walk with me this evening?’ So out we headed again – to yet another local nature reserve, for a brisk walk to our favorite bench and back before dinner.

I must say I felt SO much better yesterday evening than I generally do after a day in the office, and I slept like a log!! Still, something has to pay for the days off. :-) And although I did find myself getting pretty stiff today, back to being stuck in the office again, apart from that the RA has remained blissfully quiet. Long may it last. I don’t know if it’s the change in the weather or what, but I’m making the most of it. We’ve been out almost every evening this last couple of weeks, and a fair bit over the weekend. Who knows, at this rate maybe I’ll even lose a bit of weight in time for THE wedding. Then again, given that Weeny brought some rather yummy Greek Salad for lunch … maybe not.

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A bit about me

My name is not Pollyanna and I'm not a penguin. If you'd not worked out the last bit you should probably stop reading this and seek out a psychologist.

This is a blog about me and rheumatoid arthritis - sounds like fun, huh? Well I'm hoping it'll be a bit more fun than it sounds - hence the Pollyanna part. I'm going to try to stay positive about it and play 'Pollyanna's glad game' - finding reasons to be cheerful basically.

If you really want to know more see the 'About me' page.

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